Partner-Protector. Julie Miller

and exposing his gun and badge. “Your point?”

      She got the message. But she refused to be put off.

      “I have a degree in criminal justice studies, Detective. I know police procedure. You didn’t ask me any probative questions. You spent this entire interview trying to get me to admit I’m a fraud. You didn’t write down a damn thing I told you in that notebook of yours. And now you’re going back to your office to have a good laugh with your buddies at my expense.”

      “I wouldn’t—”

      “You’re not the first cop to think I’m crazy. In fact, you’re more close minded than most. If you want scientific facts, you find that building. You check out the store where I bought this doll. You interview the man who sold it to me. The doll’s the key if you want to use it.” She shoved the box into the middle of his chest and backed out the door into the icy winter chill. “Now we’re done.”

      T? MERLE SAT at his desk—tie loose, collar unbuttoned, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He looked as if he’d been working all afternoon, but it was an illusion. That crazy fake redhead had gotten under his skin and disrupted his concentration by saying one stupid letter!

      How did she know about his past? Who had she been talking to? Could she be the disgruntled relative of one of the investors his father had cheated and abandoned twenty years ago? If so, it had to be the cleverest way he’d come up against yet for one of his father’s victims to take a strip of retribution out of his hide.

      Merle stared at the data on the computer screen, seeing nothing but the capital Ts jump out at him. “How the hell…?”

      Thomas Banning was the name he’d given up years ago, when he was just a boy. He’d given it up because Thomas was his father’s name. His mother stopped using it and had taken to calling him by his middle name.

      Thomas had been a curse at his house.

      Merle wasn’t much better. Merle was an old man’s name. A nerd’s name. Sometimes even a girl’s name. It was a name that invited teasing on elementary playgrounds and in junior high locker rooms. It was a name that high-school girls giggled at and college professors mispronounced.

      It never quite fit. Yet he’d been stuck with it.

      The only time he tolerated Merle without a hint of resentment was on his mother’s lips or in his partner Ginny’s sweet, succinct voice.

      Thomas Merle Banning, Jr.

      That was his name.

      But he couldn’t use it.

      She’d come close. Too damn irritatingly close.

      Merle tossed his pen onto the open file in front of him and sank back into his chair with a heavy sigh. He rubbed his fingers back and forth across his chin and jaw, and tried to sort out his thoughts. He wasn’t just feeling defensive or distracted here. He had a good dose of guilt working on him, too.

      The fact that Kelsey Ryan had somehow uncovered his first initial bothered him almost as much as the fact she knew he’d only been humoring her by taking her to lunch and asking a few questions. Technically, he’d obeyed Captain Taylor’s request, but he hadn’t really done his job.

      Flake or not, he should have listened to her story, thanked her, then sent her on her way. Not voiced his opinion of her dubious “vision,” get her pissed and then let her storm off without so much as a thank-you or apology.

      But she’d pushed his buttons. Not just the this-feels-like-a-practical-joke button. The computer geek desk jockey wants to see some action? Let him interview the wacko. Sergeant Watkins and the other guys he’d met in the break room that morning seemed to find it terribly amusing that The Flake had been assigned to him.

      She looked like an overdecorated Christmas tree, said one. Take her to a New Year’s Eve party and use that hair to light off fireworks, said another. Sergeant Watkins had been even more direct. “I’m surprised the doctors let that looney out.”

      For some reason, though, Merle hadn’t felt like laughing. Their crude jokes and unapologetic stares had triggered the chivalric streak inside him. He outranked the blue suits and could shut them up with a command. And he’d earned enough respect from his fellow detectives for them to honor his request to let it drop.

      He hadn’t laughed because Kelsey Ryan had gotten to something deeper inside him. Maybe he saw a little of that skinny, four-eyed kid he used to be in her. The kid whose daddy had stuck a gun in his mouth and killed himself because he couldn’t repay the funds he’d embezzled or face the consequences of his actions. He’d been the kid who hid behind books and rebuilt computers so he couldn’t hear the teasing.

      He’d outgrown the skinny phase, graduated valedictorian and had his pick of colleges. He and his mother, Moira, had worked for years to rebuild the estate that had been decimated by his father’s debt, so he had a little money to his name. He’d become a cop after earning the first of two degrees, and had made detective on his first application. He’d made his share of mistakes along the way, but he’d solved crimes. He’d taken bullets and killed men in the line of duty.

      Thomas Merle Banning, Jr. wasn’t anybody’s victim anymore.

      But he’d never forget what it felt like.

      And he’d never fail to recognize it in someone else.

      Kelsey Ryan had been hurt somewhere along the way in her life. Now she dyed her hair and lost her temper and put on airs because she didn’t want anyone to see how much she hurt.

      Merle nudged the beat-up shoe box sitting on the corner of his desk. He might not believe her story about the doll triggering visions of murder. But he should have believed her intentions. A woman like that wouldn’t knowingly set herself up to be ridiculed. She wouldn’t take that risk unless she believed what she was saying.

      It wasn’t all that long ago that he’d worked his tail off to get someone to listen to his ideas, to take him seriously. To give him a chance to prove his worth to the world.

      Mitch Taylor had given him that chance.

      He’d be a hypocrite if he didn’t offer Kelsey Ryan that same chance.

      Merle pulled the box closer and read the name of the defunct local shoe company imprinted in faded green letters on the box. Clearly, the doll wasn’t in its original packaging. Flipping over the lid of the box, Merle poked at the multicolored afghan wrapped around the doll inside and wondered who had knitted it. Probably Kelsey herself, judging by the rainbow palette of colors. He pulled out the bundle and unwrapped it on his desk.

      He had to believe she really thought there was some kind of answer here.

      Merle peeled back a layer of worn newsprint, taking a moment to check the faded date. December 24, 1994.

      “The day before Christmas.”

      He frowned as the encyclopedia of random facts he carried around inside his head tried to tell him something. Slipping on his wire-frame glasses, he scrolled through the data on the computer screen until he found the first victim in the file—a Jane Doe prostitute the original investigators had dubbed Jezebel.

      He scanned the information, then rechecked the wadded paper around the doll. He checked the computer again. “Gotta be a coincidence.”

      Jezebel’s strangled, nude body had been discovered in an alley the day after Christmas.

      1994.

      Merle sat straighter in his chair, pulled a pair of plastic gloves from the bottom drawer and put them on.

      Most coincidences could be explained away by facts.

      Beneath the old newsprint he found a layer of tissue paper wrapped around the doll. The doll itself looked like some sort of collectible, with a face and body crafted of wire and silk and stuffing. It had feathery golden hair and wore an embroidered gown trimmed in beads of glass and mother-of-pearl. Pretty nice handiwork.

      Pretty